Thursday, 18 December 2008

Wedding Statistics from American Bridal

If you haven't already guessed by now, we're serious wedding voyeurs over at Smart Wedding Planning. If someone invites us to a wedding, we go. If someone asks us to look at their wedding photos, we do. Slides? We'll watch them gladly? You want us to have a copy of your wedding DVD? Yes, please! Basically, we're interested in anything and everything having to do with weddings, from who is having them to how much money they're spending. Hey, everyone has a hobby, right? Weddings are just our thing.

So imagine how tickled pink we were when we received word that American Bridal's yearly wedding survey results were finally in! Now we could see just how the weddings we've been to lately measure up to the average. When it came to excerpting it, we just couldn't decide what to include, so the full results are below:

Most (90%) are doing the planning themselves, with help from family and friends, and not hiring a professional wedding planner.

Since budgets are a concern for many, It looks like there’s a major spread in wedding budgets. About 25% are planning a wedding on a budget of less than $10,000, while 25% have wedding budgets over $25,001. The remaining 50% are somewhere in between, with 38% reporting in the range of $10,001 to $20,000.

“Location, location, location” as the saying goes, and roughly a quarter (25%) are having the reception at a hotel, and 10% have opted to host their nuptials at a country club. About 6% of couples selected a destination wedding, while a majority (55%) reported they are finding another type of venue to rent for the event and reception.

Size matters for this year’s brides, and by that we mean the size of the wedding party. Most couples (48%) will have between 5 to 8 people, while 37% of respondents have 9 or more bridesmaids and attendants. The trend seems to lean toward larger, more inclusive wedding parties, which leads us to the number of invited guests. Nearly 40% report they will have a guest count of more than 200 and 14% say their total guest count is under 100. A good 34% are inviting 100 to 150 guests.

As for cutting costs and wedding budgets, 68% said they’ve lowered their budgets by $1,000 or less. However, the small cuts they are making may not have a big impact on the actual wedding. Items that brides generally won’t skimp on are wedding gowns, photography and wedding rings.

When asked more specifically about what they would and would not change, most are not significantly altering music, location, reception style, or dress. Instead, they are more likely to adjust the cost of invitations, wedding favors, bridal accessories and gifts for the bridal party (combined, 46% of respondents said they would make changes in these 3 areas).